


Amidst the Flowers that Ophelia Picked

by aces



Category: Firefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-17
Updated: 2010-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-08 01:59:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aces/pseuds/aces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>I'd take off all my clothes<br/>& cross the damp cold lawn & down the bluff<br/>into the terrible water & walk forever<br/>under it out toward the island.<br/>~John Berryman</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Amidst the Flowers that Ophelia Picked

River is floating.

 

*

 

"River!" Simon shouts, and River hears him, but she is laughing.

River is running. Simon had been talking to her, and the cap'n had been shouting, and the others had all been trying to make themselves heard, even if they had only been standing in the world and not looking at each other (_Ruttin' kid, causing all her gorram trouble_, thought Jayne, and _I wish they all wouldn't shout so much_ from Kaylee), and River couldn't stand all the yelling in her head.

So she took off.

River is running. This planet has trees and grass and rocks and roots to trip over, but River is running. She can feel her breath—in, out, in, out, in, out—rhythmic and somewhere between shallow and deep; she can feel each individual muscle in her thighs and calves as they contract and release, contract and release, contract and release; she can feel the strength and tension in her arms as they curl into her sides, fists lightly clenched; she can feel her hair streaming out behind her in the breeze that she has created. There is sunlight on her face and green, live things brushing against her skin, and she almost feels as if she could be floating through this world.

"River!" Simon shouts, but River runs on, and she is laughing.

 

*

 

"Skin," River says in disgust, holding her arms out and away from herself. She has already discarded her clothing, almost bare in her bra and underwear.

"_Skin_," she repeats, holding her arms out and away from herself, her stance wide so her thighs or knees could not by accident come in contact with each other. Her hair is knotted so tightly no strand would dare fall onto the nape of her neck. "I want it _off_," she declares. "Simon, take my skin off."

Eventually, she will accept clothing again; eventually, she will collapse into herself, allow body parts to touch other body parts. Until then, she is distorted, akimbo, unnatural angles and sharpened points.

 

*

 

Sometimes the world whites out around River. Colors drain out; sound melts away; feeling dissolves, and River is left with a space that is white and vivid and terrifyingly beautiful.

She is not blind when this happens, nor is she deaf or numb. Everything is somehow starker, realer. People become mathematical equations, bodies of pure probability and kinetic energy.

(_One, two, three; point and shoot, but do not look_.)

The world is simplified, and River thinks that in these instances she could control the world, if she wanted to.

(_No power in the 'verse can stop me_.)

She never tells Simon about these moments, and she only rarely admits to herself that she enjoys this feeling of power.

 

*

 

River is floating.

 

*

 

There is music playing inside River's head that sounds and tastes and feels like rain, and she is drowning in it. "Simon," she sobs, hands pressed to her temples, "please, Simon, make it _stop_, I'm drowning…"

Eventually the pouring rain will turn into the thump of a thundering downpour, and in her anger River will punch Simon. And then the rain will turn outward as she cries, and still she is drowning.

 

*

 

Sometimes River is outside of herself. She watches herself, then, notices the curve of her own back as she turns into herself, wraps her arms around her knees and sits before the bed. There is something beautiful about that curve, River thinks, something aesthetically pleasing, and she settles down to watch herself.

 

*

 

"River?" Simon's voice hesitates; he always hesitates with her, choosing some words and discarding others with care, the way he decides upon a course of treatment for a patient. But with nobody else does he stop before he even starts, and River remembers that he used to be a lot more decisive around her.

"River?"

"Can't you feel it?" she asks, standing still. (_It's black out here, trees standing up tall and grey in the dark. There are crickets, near a pond or lake; she can hear water lapping. The breeze brushes against River's face, and she smiles into the cool brush of air_.) "It's beautiful here, Simon."

"You've never found the hold very beautiful before, River," Simon takes her gently by the arm and moves her. (_Her bare feet crunch against leaves and grass beneath her. She thinks there might be a full moon or two above, behind the clouds_.)

"Come back to your room," Simon says, walking with her. "You need to rest."

"Who could rest on such a beautiful night?" River asks, turning to catch the breeze against her face.

 

*

 

River is dancing badly.

She can hear the music, she can _hear_ it, but she cannot _feel_ it, not the way it's supposed to feel, and it grates against her skin, itches at her spinal cord, crawls along the back of her neck like a hundred-legged spider. She shakes her feet, she twists her torso, she flings her arms in the air and pushes behind herself, all in an effort to make the music feel _right_. She is hollow, and the music does not fill her.

"Make it stop," River moans, running her hands over her face and stretching up to her very tip-tippy-toes. "Make it _stop_."

Eventually the captain gives her headphones full of static, and the silence is a blessed relief.

 

*

 

River is floating.

 

*

 

At night, when everybody else is sleeping, River reaches beyond herself.

It is an exercise in visualization, and this is how she does it: first, she lies down on the floor and stretches, stretches until every single digit on hand and foot is extended, lengthens until every single vertebra and rib seem completely separated from each other. And then she closes her eyes and feels her soul, her _ka_, her mojo, her spirit, her _qi_, her _life force_ rise up.

For a moment, she is a mirror image of herself, ghost fingers pressed to real fingers, ghost nose bumping into cartilage and bone, ghost eyes looking into eyes that have suddenly flashed open and sightless. And then she squeezes, squeezes herself into a ball so that she—the real she—can fly free.

She settles into the ship, lets every single and distinct atom of herself find a special place within bulkhead and engine and screw; and then she wanders, checking in on each crew member (_Kaylee dreams of Simon, and Jayne dreams of guns, and the cap'n dreams of nothing_). She balances on railings and jumps through nonexistent hoops and soars out into the black, becoming for an instant the star that hangs to the left and just beyond morning over every single planet.

She floats, delighted and free and no longer prisoner to her own skin.

 

*

 

River is walking. The world is full of meadow and wild flowers, and she is on a hill overlooking a pond, the sun rising cool and sweet behind her.

River has never stood on this world, but this dream is always the same, and she is walking. Her boots crunch through the grasses and weeds; there is dew on the tips of these living things, and she trails her fingers through the plants, shivering.

A yellow glow from behind, warming the back of her neck, and River always thinks that if she can just keep walking, she will find peace somewhere over the next hill.

 

*

 

River is floating. The water, lukewarm and slippery with moss and algae and other close, living things, supports and surrounds her, murmuring in her ear as she drifts through it.

(_The near-silent swish of her axe blade as it swings through the air; the slickness of the blood and ooze on its metal, imprinted into the skin on her fingers_.)

River is floating. Her limbs are relaxed, neither heavy nor light, and her hair streams around her like the living plants under the water.

(_Whipcord strength of muscles as they push and pull, as she whirls and jumps and kicks and hits, as her hair flies around her with every move that her body makes_.)

River is floating. There are no other people in the water, on the shore; there is only the silence of the wind in the trees above and the whisper of the water caressing her skin.

(_Screams, and shouts, and squawks, and squalls. Bodies, bodies _everywhere,_ bodies of skin and bone and sharp pointy objects that only sometimes are teeth, and they die with a single stroke of her axe blade_.)

River is floating. Water, and trees, and sunlight; so much beautiful sunlight shining through the leaves and reflecting in the water.

(_Light, light from outside where the Reavers had broken through and where the soldiers now stand, blinding light on the cap'n and Simon and all the others as they huddle away, vulnerable, and her grip on the axe blade tightens. _

_Her grip on the axe blade tightens_.)

River is floating.


End file.
